Minecraft snapshot 18W14A/B – phantom membranes and sea pickles

Phantom Membrane item new for Minecraft 1.13

Phantom membranes and sea pickles – sounds like a cool album name to me…

After a two week hiatus at a developer conference, the Mojang team are back at their desks and today release Minecraft snapshot 1.13 18W14A. Probably the most revelatory new change is the introduction of the Phantom Membrane item. A what now?

The Phantom Membrane is dropped by the new Phantom mob, the player voted mob that appears in the night skies when players haven’t slept for an extended period. The biggest immediate impact of this is that Elytras can no longer be repaired with basic leather – they now require the new Phantom Membrane item. This initially seems perplexing, at first blush this would appear to make Elytra repairing much much harder and time consuming. And to a degree pointlessly tedious, and seemingly work for works sake. To repair an Elytra you now have to forgo sleep, wander around at night and wait for Phantom spawning. Yawn. No pun intended…

That said I just realized, I’ve virtually never repaired an Elytra. Have you? By the time I’ve reached the end and gathered an Elytra I’ve usually already spun up a Villager breeder or have access to Mending and Unbreaking III on demand. As soon as I get an Elytra these two enchantments go directly onto the Elytra. Especially on SMP servers where obtaining an Elytra can be extremely difficult, I rarely risk degrading the item and repairing it. It’s just too valuable.

That’s the headline item anyway, sure to cause more than a few raised pitchforks. Speaking of which the Trident gets a few more tweaks today, here are the full release notes:

CHANGES IN 18W14A

New item: Phantom Membrane
New potion: Potion of Slow Falling
Added 4 new advancements
New Kelp textures
Changed generation rules for kelp and seagrass
New Riptide behaviours for tridents
Optimized cloud rendering some more

PHANTOM MEMBRANE

Very spooky.
Elytra now requires Phantom Membrane to be repaired
Phantoms now drop Phantom Membrane instead of leather
Can be crafted into a super spooky Slow Falling potion

ADVANCEMENTS

We’re making progress!
Fishy Business: Catch a fish
Tactical fishing: Catch a fish… without a fishing rod!
A Throwaway Joke: Throw a trident at something. Note: throwing away your only weapon is not a good idea.
Very Very Frightening: Strike a Villager with lightning
More to come!
RIPTIDE

Whooosh!
No longer compatible with Loyalty or Channeling
If riptide won’t work (such as being on land, nice and dry) you can’t attack with the trident at all
Riptide will not throw the trident, but instead launch you forwards with the trident
Looks neat!

Sea pickles on land in Minecraft 1.13Sea pickles underwater lighting in Minecraft 1.13

And today, April 5th, we have a further update – 18W14B; that introduces that item we’ve all bee baying for, for such a long time: sea pickles. No, this isn’t April 1st and yes you read that right. Sea pickles are now bizarrely a thing as seen in the image above. The pickles generate in warmer water and can be placed on land too. The official release noes state

SEA PICKLES

What to call them? It’s really quite a pickle.
Generate either by themselves in warm oceans, or with coral
Up to 4 pickles can be placed in a block
Emits light depending on how many pickles there are per block
Can be smelted down into green dye
Pickle.

As well as plenty of bug fixes there has also been some fanciful renaming of the coral blocks as listed below.

CORAL NAMES

Hopefully the last time they get renamed!

All full blocks of coral are now called “coral block”
Coral plants are now called “coral”
“blue” coral is now called “tube” coral
“pink” coral is now called “brain” coral
“purple” coral is now called “bubble” coral
“red” coral is now called “fire” coral
“yellow” coral is now called “horn” coral
For example, “blue coral” is now “tube coral block”
For example, “purple coral plant” is now “bubble coral”

Check out the coral reefs at night now, these things are starting to really bring the world to life!